Overall, I listened to this historical arch of the early days prior to Bernard Samson that included his father in small bits, but also introduced Lisl Hennig as a young woman (Bernie's adopted "aunt" figure) and the origins of the Hotel Hennig as a tearoom of their family house. However, the main arch was of the two Winter brother, Peter and Pauli who take different paths from through WWI, the Weimar and WWII, with their mother being an American Vernonica Renssalaer with a brother Glen likely related to Bret Renssalaer as a main colleague of Bernie's in Game, Set, Match and Hook, Line, Sinker trilogies. Will agree with David C that this is best read after the Samson spy novels, but disagree that it was not as good at the rest - it was. And the ending is pretty clear, and abrupt ... and obvious. It is too bad that Fighter, An Expensive Place to Die, XPD, Yesterday's Spy and several others have not been turned into audiobooks. Len Deighton was a far more interesting spy novelist that John Le Carre and others. I know because I have read and listened to them all.

I had read the triple trilogy first, so there was fun in meeting the ancestors of the people in those novels. Here, the physical environments are not as sharply worded as in the 9, and I did not feel the characters as strongly. The ending is very vague - you will really not know what happened, other than who died. Author did a great job of building us a true Nazi monster, yet that character lacks any awareness at all of the human consequences of certain clever decisions. This book is interesting, due even more to true events than to its characters. I was googling zeppelins, Unter den Linden, Allianz Insurance vs deathcamps in Poland, Soviet behavior after Berlin fell, encirclement of the German 6th army (twice!), the 1077th in Stalingrad, etc. For those with daddy, brother, or wife issues, this book is a good workout, too. If you've read any Deighton, read this last, but do read it.

Len takes you right there. A great work.